Scuffling erupted nearby, and I released his hair to jab my thumb into the socket of the man’s eye.
“You little fucker!” he roared, reaching up to flip me over his shoulder. I smacked into the ground, breath punching out of me on impact.
The blast of a gun made me roll and raise my arms protectively.
The body of the man who had tossed me over his shoulder fell beside me, a bullet hole in his forehead. For long seconds, I stared, caught in the empty eyes of the dead man. One moment, he’d been alive and breathing, but now he was lifeless.
Tearing my eyes away, I looked up to see Kieran standing there with a gun in his grip and livid eyes. “I told you to stay in the car.”
Someone lunged from behind.
“Watch out!” I warned, but Ghost appeared and knocked him out of the way.
Kieran spun and started fighting alongside his friend, and I scrambled up just as Rett came charging out of the store with apair of aqua-scaping tweezers. They looked a lot like the things people plucked their eyebrows with but supersized. As he ran, he drew them back and brought them down into the man who was squaring off against Ghost.
The man bellowed and looked incredulously at the blunt object poking out of his arm. Seconds later, he lunged for my friend, but Ghost threw himself in the center, and two men leaped at Kieran.
Bang! Bang!
The succession of shots made everyone look.
“Enough! You’re creating a spectacle,” announced a man standing beside the car in front of the SUV.
He was wearing a deep-blue suit without a single crease and a blood red tie. The cufflink at his wrist glistened in the sun when he lowered the gun he’d fired into the sky.
Where did those bullets go?
The back door of the car closest to me opened, and a man stepped out. He was wearing a crisp black suit with a silver tie. He looked a lot like the guy in the red tie.
“You have balls, killing one of my men,” he said to Kieran.
“He should have kept his hands to himself,” Kieran replied, completely unapologetic.
It was one thing to be told your boyfriend was a hitman but entirely another to actually see him do it.
I love him anyway.
“You think you can demand a meeting and then not show up?” the man asked, moving on from his dead associate. He must not have liked him very much because he didn’t seem upset at all. “We’ve killed men for less.”
Realization slammed through me.Oh my God, it’s them.
I gaped, taking in both men, noting how imposing they looked. Both reeked of money, were tall, and had athletic builds. Both also had dark hair and eyes, with the man in the redtie sporting a beard. I stared so thoroughly that I noticed the matching silver rings they wore on their right hands.
The Salvatores. My father’s brothers.
My uncles.
It couldn’t be. I looked nothing like them. They were filet mignon, and I was ground beef from the clearance section. The fatty kind.
There was no way I shared even a shred of DNA with these formidable men. Kieran’s intel had to be wrong. I turned to tell him and realized, while I was spiraling into some weird identity crisis, Kieran was being held at gunpoint.
“No!” I yelled, vaulting over the dead man to throw myself in front of my boyfriend. I held my arms, using myself like a shield. “Don’t shoot.”
Kieran let loose a string of very bad words and grabbed my arms, forcing them down as he spun so he was the one blocking me. “How dare you put yourself between me and a gun?” His voice was nothing more than an angry rumble.
Twisting free from his hold, I turned to face him. “Am I supposed to stand there and watch you get killed? If you’re going to die, then I am too!”
Okay, that soundeda lotbetter in my head.
